Dragonfly, New York, United States

Flight of fancy

Everybody has to be optimistic. Future is near ,so we have to follow the changes it brings. How can anybody say that this is ugly(?!?) or unsuitable for New York's standards. This project can even provide energy for itself . It's an ecological building which is going to produce organic products to NY's residents. I've read that 800 million farmers will work there. Anyway, it doesn't only offer a beautiful tone to Roosevelt Island, but it has a very serious intention too, healthy life.Isn't that enough?

Easily one of the most ridiculous things I've EVER encountered. Agriculture in the city is not one of our biggest dilemmas...maybe for maniacs like the one who invented this!

20/05/09
Dave, San Francisco

STUPID, nothing worth commenting on.

19/05/09
Carlos, London

Horrendous, who designed this , Gulliani and Travolta?
anything can be justified in the name of green...
Mr Callebaut, sustainable is also the history of a city.

Dragonfly concept aims for ecological self-sufficiency in New York

The latest concept design from Vincent Callebaut Architects – the Dragonfly – has been designed with the intention of easing the ever-increasing need for ecological and environmental self-sufficiency in the urban cityscape. The proposed development, designed around the Southern bank of Roosevelt Island in New York, follows a vertical farm design which, it is hoped, would cultivate food, agriculture, farming and renewable energy in an urban setting.

The unique 128 floor, 700m concept design is spread over two oblong towers and suggests building a prototype of an urban farm in which a mixed programme of housing, offices, laboratories and farming spaces are vertically laid out over several floors and cultivated by its inhabitants. The architecture of the design proposes reinventing the vertical building, so associated with the New York skyline of the 19th and 20th centuries, both structurally and functionally as well as ecologically.

The functional organisation of the design is arranged around two 600m towers, symmetrically arranged around a huge climactic greenhouse that links them, and constructed of glass and steel. This greenhouse, which defines the shape of the design, supports the load of the building and is directly inspired by the structural exoskeleton of dragonfly wings. Two inhabited rings buttress around the ‘wings,’ and along the exterior of these are solar panels, which will provide up to half the buildings electricity, with the rest being supplied by three wind machines along the vertical axes of the building.

While most would argue that the unconventional design of Dragonfly would be more suited to Dubailand than New York, the conceptual design tackles the contemporary dilemma of food production and agriculture in a city sorely lacking in the horizontal space required to do so, as well as attempting to achieve this in an ecologically sound and renewable way by merging production and consumption in the heart of the city.